De vecino a ciudadano

The following chapter includes the results of the study. The results are

categorized into three separate sections. The first section discusses the results from the student survey. The second section contains the results of the teacher interview, followed by a final section that presents the findings of the discourse analysis.

Student Perceptions and Preferences of Feedback

Student responses to the survey clearly indicated that the students perceived the audio feedback in a generally positive manner. Of the 38 students who took the survey, 10.5% claimed that written feedback was more helpful than audio feedback, while 26.3% felt that audio feedback was more helpful than written, and 63.2% preferred a

combination of both audio and written feedback (see Table 1 below). None of the students found either type feedback unhelpful.

Table 1

Student Feedback Preferences

Instructor Written Audio Audio and

Written Neither A 4 5 13 0 B 0 5 11 0 Total 4 10 24 0 % 10.5 26.3 63.2 0.0

Later in the survey, students mentioned reasons why they felt one form of feedback was more helpful than the other. Those students who found audio feedback to be more beneficial explained that hearing the comments allowed them to understand the corrections better. In addition, some students claimed to feel more engaged by the audio comments than by the written comments, but they indicated that one weakness of the

audio feedback was that it lacked clear references to specific locations within the assignment. Since the audio comments lacked visual guideposts, many students pointed out that they had difficulty locating the errors that were expressed in the audio files.

The lack of contextual cues within the audio format appeared to be a common concern among the students. One student explained that “both [types of feedback] provided helpful information, but for different reasons. The audio feedback was helpful because it provided more detail than written; however, written was nice because it had the visual element.” The same student later mentioned that “both [written and audio] are necessary; especially when they work together because they expand on regular feedback and answer any questions I usually have about why things were marked off.” This was a common reaction noted within the survey data. Students who preferred written comments cited the lack of clear reference points as the main deciding factor in preferring written feedback. Other students mentioned that while written comments were simple and clear, the audio comments seemed more personal and explanatory, which helped them better understand the written comments.

The survey data concluded that while both types of feedback are beneficial for student understanding, audio feedback did not appear to be a replacement for written comments, but rather a strong supplemental tool. Even though most students perceived the audio feedback in a positive manner, written feedback appeared to serve as a strong foundation for the audio feedback, and the survey results suggested that written

comments should not be replaced by only audio comments. While student perception of audio feedback was mostly positive, teacher perceptions of audio feedback seemed mixed.

Teacher Perceptions of Feedback

The instructors perceived audio feedback to have a positive impact on the feedback process; however, they both mentioned that audio feedback had some

weaknesses as well. In regard to the positive aspects of audio feedback, both instructors commented that the audio comments were more personal. Instructor A claimed that the students were more engaged with the feedback when it was presented in the audio format and that the audio feedback seemed to be a more polite way to critique student work. Like instructor A, instructor B agreed that the audio format allowed for more elaboration and a conversational tone that may have functioned to better engage the students. In addition, the data clearly demonstrated that the quantity of feedback provided in the audio format was larger than the written format.

Even though both instructors thought that audio comments allowed them to produce more feedback at a faster rate, they commented that using audio comments did not save time. Since the instructors read and provided written comments for each

assignment, the audio comments added to the amount of effort required by the instructor. Additionally, the instructors mentioned that the audio files would be quite difficult to compose without a written commentary to follow, and if the instructor misspoke it often times resulted in a second or third attempt at a single file. In a sense, the written

comments served as a foundation for the audio data that they provided, and as instructor B mentioned, “the written comments seemed more polished” than the audio files. Both instructors concluded that the audio data would not function well as a singular feedback method: Written feedback functions as a guide for both the students and the instructors because the written comments are clear, easy to revise, and easy to reference.

When asked if either instructor would use audio feedback in their future

pedagogical approach to feedback, both instructors explained that audio feedback could be an important tool for students who need extra support. They both claimed that audio feedback might not be a good option for instructors with large class loads or a large numbers of students. In addition, instructor B opined that while the technological difficulties of learning a system and creating audio files abated over time, managing hundreds of files could pose a challenge for instructors. Both instructors confirmed that for audio comments to be effective, the instructor should create a system for recording and storing the files before compiling the files.

Discourse Analyses

The results of the discourse analyses demonstrate some clear differences between audio comments and written comments. As illustrated in Tables 2 and 3 below, both instructors used directives containing modals within their instruction. However, instructor A clearly employed different modals dependent on the feedback type. Each column in tables 2 and 3 indicates the percentage of the total files that contained each modal.

As noted in Table 2, instructor A demonstrated a preference for the modals should and

would within the 22 audio files.

Table 2

Frequency of Modal Usage in Directives for Instructor A’s Files

Type % Could % Should % Would % Want +

Infinitive % Need + Infinitive % Imperative Audio 0 59 86 41 18 45 Written 18 32 23 0 5 91

It is interesting to note that 86% of the audio files produced by Instructor A contained directives with would, while only 23% of the written files contained the same construction. Forty-five percent of the audio files contained an imperative, while 91% of the written files contained some type of imperative construction. In contrast, modal data from instructor B was less variable, as demonstrated by Table 3 below.

Table 3

Frequency of Modal Usage in Directives for Instructor B’s Files

Type % Could % Should % Would % Want +

Infinitive % Need + Infinitive % Imperative Audio 41 29 23 29 41 53 Written 38 24 29 12 41 64

Instructor B had similar modal usage regardless of feedback type; however, like

instructor A, instructor B did demonstrate a preference for the imperative form within the written data, with 64% of the written files containing an imperative, while 53% of the audio files contained an imperative construction. Since the audio comments favored modals over imperatives, one could argue that this use of modals had a social function that led to the personal aspect that was mentioned in the student surveys.

Furthermore, the variance in pronoun usage is a clear indication of the interactive nature of audio feedback. As Table 4 illustrates, first- and second-person pronouns were far more common in the audio comments than the written comments.

Table 4

Average Number of Pronouns per Instructor for Both File Types

Pronoun Instructor A Instructor B

Audio Written Audio Written

It 5.8 0.7 11.0 2.4

You 15.3 3.3 24.9 9.7

I 11.3 0.7 8.5 1.5

They 1.0 0.2 2.2 1.0

We 1.0 0.6 0.8 0.2

As Biber (2006) explains, first and second-person pronouns as well as contractions (discussed next) are spoken discourse features that function to create interactive and informal discourse. Since the student survey data suggested that students preferred the personal and interactive nature of audio feedback, the usage of first- and second-person pronouns appears to be a clear indication of a difference between written and audio comments. In addition, the increased frequency of first-person pronouns functions to support Hudson (1990), which explains that the usage of first-person pronouns with the modal verb would functions to de-emphasize the agent of a directive. Both instructors often used the construction I would to avoid emphasizing the students as an agent. This construction serves to create indirect directives via the use of modals like

could and would, which are generally considered to be polite in speech.

The presence of contracted speech in the audio comments also shows a clear difference between written and audio feedback. For both instructors, contractions were

Table 5

Prevalence of Contractions for Both Instructors for Both File Types

Feature Instructor A Instructor B

Audio Written Audio Written

Prevalence of Contractions

12.8 0 14.8 1.1

Another difference between audio and written data can be seen in one of the instructor’s responses. Table 6 reveals that instructor A clearly praised students roughly five times more often within the audio data than the written data. For instructor A, audio comments had a positive tone that was not demonstrated as clearly within the written data. For instructor B, praise was equal between both the written and audio data.

Table 6

Frequency of Encouragement for Both Instructors for Both File Types

Per File Instructor A Instructor B

Audio Written Audio Written

Average Frequency of Encouragement

5.8 1.2 6.8 6.8

Finally, as shown in Table 7, instructor A had an average word count of 366 per audio file, while the average word count for the written files was considerably lower, at 99 words per file. Instructor B also produced a larger word count within the audio data, with an average audio file length of 306 words and an average written file length of 169 words.

Table 7

Average Word Count and Audio File Length for Both Instructors

Per File Instructor A Instructor B

Audio Written Audio Written

Average Word Count

366 99 306 169

Average Time 2:37 2:12

In accordance with the previously mentioned teacher perceptions, these data suggest that the audio format produced a larger quantity of feedback. The average time per audio file for instructor A was 2:37, while instructor B had an average file length of 2:12 seconds. These findings are consistent with the work done by Still (2006) and Klammer (1973) that suggests that audio comments allow instructors to produce a larger quantity of feedback in less time than traditional written comments.

Overall, these data suggest that audio and written comments often have distinctive discourse features. Within the data, written comments had a larger prevalence of the imperative form and tended to be shorter in terms of word count. Audio comments were highly interactive and contained many indirect directives that materialized through modal verbs like should, would, and could. In addition, contractions were a clear indication of variation between the two feedback types: The audio comments contained contractions while, in contrast, contractions were nearly non-existent in the written data. These features point to the assertion that audio feedback is an interactive, personal, and

important to the feedback process since they served as a foundation on which the audio comments were constructed.

CHAPTER V